


Vox Mythica

by Bennet_Doyeni



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Mythology - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-12-08
Packaged: 2018-07-28 13:01:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7641316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bennet_Doyeni/pseuds/Bennet_Doyeni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All things fall to time, but not everything is lost</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tales & Titles

Time buries everything eventually, but in some places there are fragments that survive. Stories turned to legend then to myth. A sword that, on it’s most talkative days will recount the blood of friend and foe that it has tasted. A wall of a ruined sewer in a ruined town that has one crude picture still intact. A festival day with origins long mythologized out of recognition. The myths rarely agree - were there seven or eight, were they mortals or gods or something in between, were they companions or family or something else entirely. But they do agree (or at least overlap enough to appear to agree) on the archetypes, the themes and the iconography.

There is Grog, the Thunder King, the Defiant.

There is Percival, the Bearer of Bad News, the Vengeful.

(Some include Tiberius, from Draconia, the Seeker.)

There is Vax, the Dark Angel, the Exile.

There is Vex, the Witch, The Rising Star.

There is Scanlan, the Half-Penitent, the Father

There is Pike, the Reserved, the Friend

And Finally, there is Keyleth, the Wanderer, the Conscience.

 

They are the once and future heroes, the dragon slayers and realm savers.


	2. Grog, the Thunder King

The myths of Strongjaw are the simplest, if any of them can be simple. He is the one who towers over the others, the one whose rage protects, the archetypical brother warrior. The giants claim him as one of their nobler kin. The half-orcs see themselves in his size and his anger, but also in his place between the world of the city and the world of the battlefield. The goliaths though, remember, they know that Grog Strongjaw is theirs, a figure of strength in battle and strength in restraint: one who challenged a leader twice and one who refused leadership when offered it. 

 

Those who remember Grog remember a warrior who defied to conform, who attacked to protect, who wielded harm as an aid. Shrines to grog are few and far between, but every now and again certain goliath herds or druidic tribes will empty a cask of ale into the ground to remember the slayer of dragons.


	3. Percival, the Bearer of Bad News

The myths of Whitestone are buried deep in the palace library, and in the sinews of the Sun Tree. He is the one with the strange machines, or rather, by the time he his a myth, an almost forgotten piece of history, they are not so strange. But even the inventor of the gun is not immortal, and his myths are those of revenge and redemption, of the senselessness of grief, and the rage that purports to do good. Sometimes he is remembered out of context, his arc is ascribed to others, and his weapons are assigned to others. Whitestone remembers though, the de Rolos remember, Percival was one of them, a man of intelligence and regret: one who made a deal with a devil, and one who unmade it.

 

Those who remember Percival remember an inventor who killed for redemption and who died for revenge. The words on the mausoleum (where the regents of the Sun Tree still leave memorial stones, once a year) in the shady plot outside the castle, remember him:

“here lies Percival Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III of Vox Machina

“My legacy survives as long as Whitestone lives”


	4. Tiberius, the Seeker

The myths of Stormwind are half-myths really, where they can be found at all, a single statue, mostly broken with age, an inscription half defaced, a second-hand account in the journal of one of New Draconia’s founders, nothing more tangible. But those myths that do exist, they tell of a dragonborn, possessed of an uncanny belief that the world was magical, that people were better than they appeared, and that wonder could be found in anything. Because his story is so rare, it is not often that he is so egregiously mis-remembered as his compatriots sometimes are, but one change is usually made, a leftover edit from the day that he died -from the events of his death-, more often than not, when images of Tiberius exist, he has no tail. There is no one left who remembers that this is an error.


	5. Vax, the Dark Angel

The myths of the champion of the Raven Queen linger in her sanctums, and every now and then, when someone asks, she will mention the fate touched who served her. He is the one with black wings, the one with small blades placed with precision. Even the memories of the gods fade though, and people don’t always know the right questions to ask to bring them back, so even the fate touched fades into obscurity, his blades -myths in themselves- given to others, his service to his deity attributed to those who came before and those who came after. His stories are the stories of Passion and Reason, of a fatal clinging to life and a lively fascination with death. The ashari remember, and some traces of his story remains in Syngorn. 

Those who remember Vax remember a shadow who lived and died for his belief. The children of Syngorn have a rhyme that they sometimes chant -

“Black twin black twin

Raven dark and cold

Black twin black twin

Shadow quick and bold”


	6. Vex, the Witch

The myths of the witch can be found here and there, scattered between places, as she was. Some lie in the annals of Whitestone history, some in Syngorn (where things begin they tend to remain, regardless of intent), and a few are still passed around by those things that live in the air and in the ground around those places that she frequented. Her stories are stories of longing and hiding, of riposte and parry - guard and counter-guard. Her stories are often strange, the memories of the beasts are long but not built for fine detail, and so she becomes more and more ethereal with each ursine generation that remembers their most notable of ancestors, until the young cubs can trace her image in the night sky.

 

Those who remember Vex remember a shape in the night who always reached higher. There is another verse to the children’s chant in Syngorn -

“Blue twin blue twin

Archer all alone

Blue twin blue twin

Still in search of home”


	7. Scanlan, the Half-penitent

The myths of Shorthalt are somewhat more well preserved than the rest, passed down in the bardic schools and in a number of different schools of painting, but even that kind of preservation is a kind of loss, as the distortions that he excelled at continue to ripple out and further distort the image until the origins of the myths are a tangled mess. What can be sorted out, by the bards with the attention spans for years of study, are stories of repentance without remorse, of joy and laughter and pain, of risk and resiliency. The bards may remember their own, but it is the church of Sarenrae that remembers him most clearly, his image (and a small, blue, piece of stained glass conspicuously placed) is still in the Vasselheim chapel, with a stained glass scroll that reads: “The Fool” 

 

Those who remember Scanlan remember a spellcaster of prodigious ability, a lyrician of uncanny prodigy, and a tactician of guarded foresight. Most of his lyric contributions are misattributed or forgotten, but every now and then a scholar will include a reference to “the bard” in the dedication, and every so often, a ‘love’ poem will resurface, and, well, the crudest poems age the best.


	8. Pike, the Reserved

The myths of Trickfoot did not wait for her death to begin, even her friends promoted her to deific status. Long after, those myths remain, a holy figure: winged and bathed in holy light, looking more celestial than material, her church in Vasselheim still holds her name and her image. Even the saints fade though, and though her name and image remain, little else does. Sarenrae remembers, of course, but no one knows to ask about the gnome that gave and gave. There is a temple in Whitestone that captures her better, though few visit it these days.

 

Those who remember Pike remember a holy woman with a sharp tongue, a fighter with fearsome ability, and a healer with the power to raise the dead. Her temples stand across the lands as a testament to the goodness of Sarenrae, and to the change that one tenacious cleric can affect. There are other markers of Pike’s passing, stories that wouldn’t exist, a gravestone slightly newer than it should have been, small things that mark the life of the mother, maiden, monster.


	9. Keyleth, the Wanderer

The myths of Keyleth of Vox Machina are harder to find than any of her compatriots. The Ashari still remember Keyleth the headmistress, some of them literally, long lived as the Ashari are. Record of her aramente though, is restricted to all but the current headmaster of the Ashari, and any record of herself that was left in the world, well, she had time to find it and obscure it. This does not mean that there are no traces of her, there are certain remnants she did not touch, that she could not bring herself to touch; a copse of trees here and the graves beneath them for which she grew them, the storehouse built to hold a bumper crop and the dusty ledger book that remembers the cause, tunnels in the earth - beneath Whitestone and beneath Westruun. 

 

Those who have pieced together enough to remember Keyleth remember an uncertain leader, a powerful druid who walked the line between blind rage and far-sighted altruism, and a fierce friend and protector. Her successors remember a far-sighted leader who protected her people in an uncertain age. The earth remembers a restorer of balance, a force that grew trees where others knocked them down, who filled the soil with life when others drained the life from it, who restored hope when all seemed lost. They all, against her will, remember a hero.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you haven't already realized, these vignettes are ordered by the natural lifespans of the members of vox machina.


End file.
